Elevation and mentoring: An experimental assessment of causal relations

Building blocks for a happy life: Longitudinal associations between early life income, mentorship and later well-being

Longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID; N = 2996) were used to test hypotheses about the link between well-being and financial and social developmental resources. Results suggest that higher average family income from birth to age 18, and personal and professional mentoring received between 17 and 30, were positively associated with indicators of positive well-being and negatively related to negative indicators of well-being. Interactions between early life family income and mentoring during emerging adulthood were not significant predictors of any of the well-being outcomes. In all cases, the magnitudes of the coefficients became larger when simultaneously accounting for early life income, emerging adulthood mentoring, and their interactions-suggesting that financial and social resources in earlier life are independently linked to later life well-being. Findings highlight that mentoring received in emerging adulthood benefits downstream hedonic and eudemonic well-being, regardless of financial resources.

Measuring Prosociality: The Development of a Prosocial Behavioral Intentions Scale

Prosociality is a critical issue in behavioral research. In this investigation, we developed a measure of prosocial behavioral intentions. Qualitative responses from two surveys (n = 465) and items from existing measures were used to generate a list of prosocial behaviors in which people might intend to engage. We factor analyzed responses to these items (n = 319) and retained the most common and representative items. The new measure demonstrated adequate internal consistency (n = 247, 147; α = .81, .83); convergent validity with past prosocial behavior (r = .51, .43), moral identity (r = .50, .55), and materialism (r = -.30, -.20). The instrument also predicted prosocial behavior while controlling for a prior measure of prosocial intentions, Exp(B) = 1.99, Wald = 10.59, p = .001, thereby demonstrating incremental predictive validity. This 4-item scale could be used across contexts to advance the study of prosociality.

Moral Elevation and Moral Beauty: A Review of the Empirical Literature

Moral elevation is defined as the emotional response to witnessing acts of moral beauty. Studies have found that elevation entails pleasant feelings of warmth in the chest, feeling uplifted, moved, and optimistic about humanity. Elevation motivates affiliation with others as well as moral action tendencies. The main goal of this review was to gather and organize the empirical findings from the last 16 years of elevation research with regard to psychological and physiological characteristics, motivational tendencies, behavioral outcomes, neuronal mechanisms, moderators, and correlates of elevation. A secondary goal was to examine whether elevation is congruent with Fredrickson's (2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. It was concluded that there is strong evidence that elevation broadens the thought-action repertoire and relatively weak evidence that it builds lasting resources. Potential evolutionary functions, the forms of measurement of elevation, the process of how elevation is triggered, practical applications and directions for future research were also addressed.